Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Specially Selected Sicilian Pistachio Gelato - Aldi

Look at me getting all fancy with condensation in these photos! Sorry for the sporadic posting schedule, as of today things finally calmed down at my day job so we should be back on track.

A few days ago I was walking around Aldi grabbing my usual groceries when I noticed that there were three new fancy flavors of gelato in the freezer section. Each one is contained in a cute little plastic tub with a resealable lid. Is it just me, or do these tubs look familiar? Kind of Talenti-like, right? But with a silver lid. The flavor variety at Aldi was really reminiscent of Talenti too. I wanted to check this stuff out, so I grabbed one of each flavor and tossed them into my cart for further analysis. (Which is a fancy way of saying it's been a rough week and I needed an excuse to buy three tubs of ice cream.)

The container is made of clear plastic which allows you to see the ice cream inside and all it's mix-ins (like little pistachio pieces). This kind of packaging allows the product itself to really shine and provide a POP of color, because other than the product itself, everything else is in black and white. (Technically black and silver, but you get what I mean.) The labeling is minimalistic, using bold but simple black illustrations and simple sans serif text, which looks really sophisticated. (Especially for Aldi.) We have a simple, somewhat minimalistic design featuring black ink, but when the silver lid catches the light it gives this product and flash of fanciness that you just don't get with Talenti's brown plastic screw-top. (Although their logo and overall design is a lot cleaner and much better technically.) Still, this is a pretty nice container, I just hope what's inside tastes as good as it looks.

I twisted the lid off, removed the circular white paper seal from the top of the container, and dove right in.

Texture-wise, this gelato was light and fluffy and it scooped out of the container very easily, which is what gelato should be like. (I traveled through Europe a few summers ago and I bought 3 different flavors of gelato every day from different shops and stands. By the end of the trip I turned my little gelato spoons as a necklace to show off my gluttony conquests and display my love for this creamy confectionary treat.)

After scraping off a decent spoonful I popped this into my mouth and I fell in love. It's not as creamy and light as the gelato I had fresh from the cart in Italy or Austria, but it's much better than most of the pretenders we have here in the states. The gelato has a light but creamy texture, with a true pistachio flavoring, and the little pistachio bits are just the right side to add a little crunch and buttery nutty flavoring to eat spoonful.

I've had Talenti's Sicilian pistachio gelato in the past, and even though I don't have it here to do a true side-by-side comparison, I feel confident in saying this is the exact same product, just in a different container. I'll have to contact the guys at On Second Scoop(who are celebrating 8 years of ice-cream food blogging! Congrats!) to let them know about these gelato-y developments.

If you enjoy Talenti's Sicilian Pistachio gelato, this is the exact same thing, only a little cheaper, and with a slightly different container. It's delicious, a little decadent, and it tastes like actual pistachios (not almonds like a lot of Americanized pistachio ice creams. Although that is really yummy too...). Because this is a specialty item at Aldi it won't be around for long, so I will definitely be buying this again and stocking up on a few containers before it disappears. (Possibly forever. Because that's how Aldi specialty products roll.)

FYI, I ate this entire container in two days. Solo. My boyfriend was sad I didn't share when he saw this in the recycling.